The cross-cultural analysis of the metaphorical conceptualization of happiness in English and Vietnamese

Abstract

This paper, based on the idiomatic expressions, examines the metaphoric conceptualization of happiness in English and Vietnamese and brings insights into the relevant cross-linguistic and cross-cultural similarities and dissimilarities in the articulation of happiness. The discussion falls into two categories: conceptual metonymy and conceptual metaphor of happiness. The former involves physiological, expressive, and behavioural responses of happiness. These are regarded as metonymies in a sense that there is a ‘stand-for’ relationship between the responses and the emotion of happiness as the whole (i.e., the part stands for the whole) (Kövecses, 2000, 2008). The latter involves the metaphorical conceptualization of happiness, in which the abstract concept of happiness as target domain is structured in terms of a nonabstract domain as a souce domain. The data analysis suggests that metaphors and metonymies involved in the conceptualization of happiness have a strong link not only to physiological, but also to cultural, influences.